LENT OUT OF CHURCH

By EDWARD SHILLITO

WIIEIST,theJeachers of the Church have reminded ..,:the faithful of the precept to keep Lent, they have, pot Acme.. their whole duty. They .must consider alsO..those.]who are n3t strict Churchmen, or perhaps i!ottiliorchrnen at all. How can the season of Lent be txplained,„or commended to them ?

It is :a serious mistake to make provision only for the spiritual man.. There are many more of the unspiritual. To • set. before them any heroic standard of discipline woukti.Nas;though.the man climbing the South Downs, not..withont a-,rest on the way, were summoned to join an Everest, Expedition. But he. is not therefore to be ignored; and if the keeping of Lent is true to things as they .are in human life, it will awaken a response in But he must not be presented with a programme which does not rest upon some clearly defined view of human life– -.Before he will enquire what he must do, he must learn why lie should do anything at all.

The mystie.need not be held back ; no one can hold him-hack. But a Church is no Church if it has nothing to offer to the .plain man who, as he puts it, does not prOfess to be religious ; whatever he says of himself, he is ready, to listen to anyone who will show him how to make the most of his life.

in addition to the books commonly prescribed for Lenten reading, there are others, which this plain man might find. more suited to his condition. There is, for example, the life of Edward Wilson of the Antarctic. It is written .of him " The secret of his influence lay in a self-discipline that was as habitual as most men's habits are, an inner culture of mind and heart and will that gave his life a poise so that he could not be untrue either to himself , or ,his fellow-men." The story of his life onwards,: to the splendid failure, when he and his com- pany, won, to„the Pole-but were beaten by the Barrier, bears out this claim. They were a company which their race might well choose to represent it before the bar a his tor y : Scott, Bowers, Evans, Oates, Wilson— their. names recall an epic of undying splendour. And Wilson, who stuck to Nature and the New Testament as the others had done, arrived at the secret of all- self-discipline : "This is the most fascinating ideal I think I ever imagined, to become entirely careless of your own soul, or body, in looking after the welfare of -others."

He' had arrived at this not without conflict. But the end crowned the strife. It was Scott himself who wrote of hinii at the last : " His eyes" have a comfortable blue look of hope, and his mind is peaceful with the satisfaction of his life in regarding himself as part of the great scheme of the Almighty."

Does. the true keeping of Lent look forward to such an end ? If it does, then the Church need not fear that even the unspiritual man will dismiss it off-hand.

Or, if another reading were sought it might be taken from the words which Lord Halifax used in St. Paul's of Lawrence of Arabia : " It was not merely that he brought to bear upon life the con- centrated strength of all his being, but.that this faculty was eloquent of victory in the stern struggle for self-conquest. All the things that clog—ambition; the competitive race, possessions, the appetites of the natural man—all must give way if real freedom is to be won. Life, free, unhampered, unalloyed. alone dosoryes the name. • • Strange how he loved the naked places of the earth, which seetnot to thatch the austerity of life as ho thought that it should Es' If the keeping of Lent brings a man into such a realm as this,. then it will not scent out of keeping with the true character of life, as every man sees it in his hours of clearest vision. If it calls men through 'conflict to the only freedom which is Worth the name, they will listen.

When he is. most himself man knows that he has in Father D'Arey's words " the animal in him, the lair of passion, and the mind rising like the moon over the troubled waters." He may not have any clear philosophy, but for practical purposes he has within him a continuous tension between his appetites and passions. and the spirit which must meet the challenge from the animal within him, or abdicate. It' there is any purpose iia huntan life, it is one which cannot be achieved without conflict and strain.

If this human scene has a character of its own. it must be found here. It is an arena where the fight does not cease. St. Paul kept his body under lest he should be a castaway ; but the sceptic who believes that thought:. is only a function of matter, and there is no soul, has to keep his body under if lie is to preach with effect that St. Paul and all the saints were in error. Ile too has to answer the challenge,. which is in the very nature of things. There arc " ascetics without faith," as Nye! I as ascetics for the sake of.the Kingdom of God. But front self-discipline no man can I escape, except by ceasing to be man.

If, then,- in Lent the least ecclesiastical of men bears a call to declare once more his independence in the fa-e of the challenge from his appetites and passions, he a•ill not think it trivial or childish. Something, as he knows, must be done if he is to racover the true balance of things:. He is still in the fight; he has not abdicated, but sometinws the fight is almost lost, and the enemy is standing over him ; and if this fight is lost finally, he knows that he is castaway, as a pen that will no longer write.

But the Christian Church does not simply reassert what is a commonplace of all serious thinkers ; it gives a promise to those who overcome. They shall have the vision of God. And with this promise it offers to men in the thick of the conflict the support that they will need. But it is for them to look at this human seen:: with • unbandaged eyes, and to be ready when they arc called to set their face away from its enchantments.

It is here that the meaning of the Wilderness comes- into the teaching of Lent. In order to overcome, they need the discipline of the wilderness. That is not far away ; it need not be a bare and solitary place, such as Arabia was to Lawrence or the Barrier to Wilson. It is any place in which the soul withdraws from the enchant- ments of life, and sees what it means in the light of en- during things.

It is to this wilderness that the spirit of man is called at this season. He is like the man who ha.s left the theatre, and is under the stars. " I may hardly be able to see the stars after the blinding light of the theatre, but there they are," said the last Puritan in the book of that name, " and gradually they will become visible- again. I shall recognise them, I shall call each of them by its name." That he will need some discipline' before he has vision every man knows in his heart of hearts. And the experience of detachment and of readjustment to for- gotten realities is the gift of the wilderness. Balaam in the old story went no more after his enchantments, but he set his face toward the wilderness, and only then did the vision come. - If in Lent the teachers of the Church will call men from the crowded scenes, where they lose too easily their true bearings, -back to the wilderness, where they can learn afresh the high calling of human lifer they will listen. -There they can understand what the. battle means, and what is the vision which is set before them.

It is worth doing at this season to call men. to conflict and discipline, to the wilderness and the vision, and the call need not be limited to the faithful sons of the Church,..

It is needed, and will -heard out of Church.- •